Australian news, and some related international items

Revolutionary new Australian project studies runaway climate change

Australian Project Simulates Runaway Climate Change Climate Central : May 19th, 2012 By Oliver Milman, The GuardianAn Australian university has embarked upon an ambitious project — hailed as the first of its kind in the world — to simulate how the environment would cope with runaway climate change.

The decade-long study, at the University of Western Sydney’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment , will subject Australian bushland to heightened CO2 levels and altered rainfall patterns consistent with a “business as usual” global increase in greenhouse gases. The centerpiece of the study is the Eucalyptus Free Air CO2 Enrichment experiment, which has involved the construction of six fiber glass and steel ring structures 92 feet high and 82 feet in diameter in native woodland in Richmond, New South Wales. The structures contain an array of sensors that will deliver a concentration of CO2 to the trees within the rings.

This, scientists say, will recreate an atmosphere where CO2 is at 550 ppm — about 40% higher than current levels — to see how the environment would change for living things, including humans.

This level of CO2 has been chosen to mimic how the environment would react in a world where no significant action is taken to reduce carbon emissions over the next 35 years.

It has been predicted that a 40% increase in CO2 would result in an average global temperature increase of about three degrees centigrade.

An automated computer-controlled system will modulate the amount of CO2 pumped from the rings, to account for environmental variability.

Scientists will use a giant 141 foot high crane to study the impact on all parts of the towering eucalypt trees, such as soil bacteria and fungi, the growth patterns of the tree canopy and the insects that dwell in the foliage……

“It will give us a window into how biodiversity will behave in futuristic conditions.”

The first results from the study, which is due to launch in September, will be published next year.

However, the institute has already conducted preliminary research — the findings can be read here and here — on a small collection of trees over the past 18 months, to test their responses to heightened CO2 and warmer temperatures.

“The outcome was that the trees had a limited ability to adjust,” said Ellsworth. “They didn’t cope well with a warm Sydney summer. Photosynthesis decreased. They stopped growing, basically.

“Heightened CO2 levels have been shown to initially aid plant growth, but previous studies have shown this can last as little as a few months.

“To put it crudely, plants want a balanced diet. CO2 is part of that diet, but they also need nutrients that aren’t depleted.”

The institute insists its work isn’t only of interest to Australia, where modelling has predicted a temperature rise of as much as 5°C , coupled with more frequent droughts, by 2070 if no action on emissions is taken…..

March – Melbourne – City of Yarra, including International Women’s Day Free Exhibition: FIRST WORLD WAR WOMEN working for peace in Melbourne 1914 – 1919 www.womensweb.com.au

This is confronting. It is history that is not just history.

This series of panels illustrates and documents in the women’s own words a peace movement that confronts us even today.

If you think Australians supported the First World War, the idea of civil liberties is new, non-Aboriginal Australians were, in the main, racist and conformist, come and see FIRST WORLD WAR WOMEN working for peace in Melbourne 1914 – 1919.